Astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary launched on first space station mission

NASA retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson was launched on the fifth spaceflight of her career early on Wednesday, joined by crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary heading for their countries’ first visit to the International Space Station.The astronaut team lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.at about 2:30 a.m.

EDT beginning the latest mission organized by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in partnership with Elon Musk’s rocket venture SpaceX.The four-member crew was carried aloft on a towering SpaceX launch vehicle consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket.Live video showed the towering spacecraft streaking into the night sky over Florida’s Atlantic coast trailed by a brilliant yellowish plume of fiery exhaust.It marked the first Crew Dragon flight since Musk briefly threatened to decommission the spacecraft after US President Donald Trump threatened to cancel Musk’s government contracts in a high-profile political feud between the two men earlier this month.Axiom 4’s autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the ISS after a flight of about 28 hours, then dock with the outpost as the two vehicles soar together in orbit some 250 miles above Earth.If all goes according to plan, the Axiom 4 crew will be welcomed aboard the orbiting space laboratory Thursday morning by its seven current resident occupants – three astronauts from the US, one from Japan and three cosmonauts from Russia.Whitson, 65, and her three Axiom 4 crewmates – Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, of India, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, 41, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, 33, of Hungary – are slated to spend 14 days aboard the space station conducting microgravity research.The mission stands as the fourth such flight since 2022 arranged by Axiom as the Houston-headquartered company builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign governments into Earth orbit.For India, Po...